20/1
Conventional—I, me, mine—existence is suffering. It’s not a bug, it’s the main feature of our ignorance continuum. Once you realize this, then nothing is the same. The truth revealing this was pronounced over 2500 years ago. But inside us it’s always been there. Perhaps this young sage can motivate us to rediscover at least this one Noble Truth so we can do something with our lives other than that which he rails against.
Classical Buddhist analysis identifies four erroneous ways of construing a self in relation to the aggregates: identifying the aggregate as the self, regarding the self as possessing the aggregate, conceiving the aggregate as existing within the self, or the self as existing within the aggregate. This schema, found already in early discourses such as the Saṃyutta Nikāya and later systematized in Abhidharma literature, functions as a diagnostic tool for ego-grasping (satkāyadṛṣṭi). Tibetan scholastic traditions continue to employ this analysis to expose progressively subtler forms of attachment to “I,” “me,” and “mine,” especially in relation to the body.
Neutral karma is considered ‘indeterminate’ in nature, and if not transformed, is the same as wasting time. But in consideration that our life is precious because it affords the opportunity to become fully enlightened—once we are engaged with the right method—then wasting time, after that certain engagement with the Dharma, seems to me to be a negligent action and therefore negative karma.
Identifying one’s karmic patterns holds an insight not only into how to change one’s behavior, but also an insight into how everything is actually happening all at once. It has been promoted that Infinite alternate threads, or ‘strings’ of reality, like an infinite amount of movie scenes already playing, are ready for one to choose whichever one they want. In this regard, it’s entirely up to us to just think positively so that all has a positive, self-determined outcome. Inspired by String Theory Physics, it’s called Reality Transurfing, recalling the escapist term ‘channel surfing’ by serially clicking the remote to change channels on the TV screen. This of course has been replaced by scrolling between all the different content creators’ sites on social media platforms. It’s known that every time we switched channels on the remote, or now scroll to different site, we get another calming (or stultifying) hit of dopamine from our brain—or what’s left of it.
Despite the seeming rescue from experiencing negative results from negative actions the endless elaboration of phenomenon outlined above presents, karmic retribution can occur one day after committing a negative action. This becomes an obstacle in deterring positive outcomes we’re hoping will occur simply by thinking them so. Karmic results, which arise from previous lifetimes, are taught by Buddhist teachers to be inescapable and that’s why purifying one’s negative karma through supplication to the Buddhas, confession, and purifying prayers and mantras, is recommended everyday.
Observation of karmic patterning—a form of mindfulness—automatically helps change one’s behavior, unless one’s ability for self-improvement is blocked by strong habits. This common and usually the case. In psychological counseling, the therapist brings to light these patterns and this resultant objectivity gives self circumspection where there is none. In psychotherapy, the therapist is more like a guru with whom one transfers their suffering identity for the wisdom of their guide who leads one out of ignorance. Called a ‘transcendent function,’ its success is to the method of wisdom the guide provides. If it’s Buddha’s wisdom, then it’s known to be good in the beginning, middle, and end. But this too can be conditioned by karma, good, neutral, and negative.
Throwing karma, the Buddhist term for committing negative actions, makes progress on the path to self awareness and eventual happiness very difficult even while practicing under a Guru who’s taught you the correct methods for purification and insight. For the outer resultant ripening causing sicknesses, bad destines, and untimely death, we need to practice Sarvavid, from the Abhisambodhi of Vairocana. For the inner purification of adventitious, latent arising karmic results both from emotive and cognitive predispositions, we need Vajrasattva first received in STTS tantra.
For example, eleven years ago I was living in Minneapolis while working on a location movie there. Back then I was still drinking and got arrested by the police for driving under the influence—a crime I myself personally deplored—but nonetheless it happened. Now, with all the protesting in Minnesota against ICE thugs I’m remembering being in Minneapolis in great detail and making judgments online about events unfolding there, all from Cambodia. At the time of being there I’d just visited Cambodia, fell in love with it and a family here, and knew I’d be returning soon. In fact, before being arrested I’d been drinking beer with a couple who’d also just returned and we discussed at length how dissatisfied we were with America. Now of course, with all the DHS kidnappings, it’s become a very dangerous place. But even then, over ten years ago, for people like my new friends and me America was already beyond unsatisfactory. We already saw the whole American Dream as over, finished, then. I don’t know if they ever expatriated, but I did, very soon after.
My experience in Minnesota of everything just discussed above forms a karmic-cluster of the events which, when recalled, creates a timeless space continuum. Within that ‘mind-space’ is a unity of all time and space because of associated causes and conditions arising together and presenting itself as mutually interconnected, and therefore, entirely dependent upon each other. Had I never been to Cambodia, I may have never been arrested, or even gone to Minneapolis in the first place, changing deeply how I now experience the current protests there.
In other words, karma seen through the circular or spiral lens of associative causes and conditions collapses time and space, destroying the three times, and makes one see how all actions are intricately and inexorably linked.
24/1
I just put several startling observations and news reports together. Couple of times now I’ve seen Trump say yo press that event think he’s going to heaven. The last time he said it was in regard to children getting tear-gassed along with their parents while driving home in Minneapolis. His answer or apology, which he never has one, was to say he doesn’t think they’ll let him into heaven. The weird part is he emoted this sheepish, innocent aura as he said it, like he was confessing. Something else he’d never do—because of course he thinks he’s always innocent. So in the rarest of moments, while flying on Air Force One, we got to witness his admission of guilt. Earlier, I watched Viola Davis give the most profound acceptance speech for an award from a church group, I’d ever heard. She said hell is the moment at death where the person you could’ve been stands beside the person you became. Trump, in his dementia, is starting to rehash the past. In a moral sense he’s already died, and perhaps not to himself but to us, he revealing that hell Viola Davis spoke of. Lastly, some content creators are saying perhaps they’ve found where all the bodies are buried, saying all they need is a warrant, helicopter to land in a remote part of the Florida swamps, and cadaver dogs. Yes, it’s property owned by Trump, bought for a dollar with yearly taxes paid up, our intrepid reporters believe is where he and others did the evilest deeds. Is this then why he believes, and gets that I’ve been a bad boy look, saying he doesn’t think they’ll let him in heaven?
Mental environments and having awareness of them may be a sign one’s ego is finally dissolving. Normally, or I should say conventionally, the ego mediates changing mental environments, similar to waking dreamscapes, invoking us in the constant distraction of self concern. But with the gradual or sudden dissolution of that mental apparatus, we experience instead discrete chapters at first, stretches of time our self concern is focused on characterized by a ‘main event’ or concern. Like a project at work that needs to be finished. When it is, then we move onto something else, perhaps a problem at home. As the ego is progressively dissolved, signaled by accompanying physical experiences of lightness and bliss, the duration of those episodes starts collapsing until one primarily experiences just moving from one mental environment to the next. At this point, if one is practicing Mantrayana, then it’s mantras, which etymologically suggest ‘mind protection,’ that takes the place of the disappearing ego, its destructive thoughts, menacing considerations, along with the disorientating disassociation of being and consciousness. It’s said mantras are what the Buddhas think. So at this point one begins to think like a Buddha and the path of seeing like one is what follows.
3/2
Dharmadhātu enlightenment, the reason I practice Sarvavid (Sarvadurgatiparoshodana Tantra), is: timeless, already complete, universally present, and causally efficacious by nature.
I’ve seen, where I live, a lot of blind faith, reasoned faith, expressed, confident faith, and the fourth, Dharmadhatu, seeing level of causal faith happening in the Buddhist country of Cambodia.
The fourth faith (phyir ’thob pa’i dad pa) asserts philosophically: “The result can function causally.” Gorampa Sonam Senge (the second premier Sakyapa logician) turns that into: A formally valid inference schema. Faith becomes formal epistemology. This is why Lamdré and Sarvavid are not ‘belief systems’—they are result-activated causal technologies under Sakya pramāṇa theory. Therefore: the result is not something produced — it is something activated. This allows: funerary liberation, unconscious purification, mass karmic repair completion-stage yogas to be defended as valid causal operations, not “symbolic prayers.”
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